Sorting out wild sources from real stories

Guelph Mercury

There’s a Moncton-area farmer who laid several bodies of his beef cattle by the side of a New Brunswick highway recently to draw attention to his concerns about the mysterious ways the animals purportedly died.

I knew the moment I heard of the stunt who was behind it. I bet I spoke with Werner Bock 25 times in the five years I worked as an editor at New Brunswick’s provincial newspaper. I met with him twice.

If you work in my business for any period of time, you encounter people like Bock.

They’re troubled, even tortured souls. They challenge and haunt me because of their passion and their ardent belief that they are connected to credible stories — ones that seem too fantastic to be true. But some are. That’s a most troubling thing.

Bock wants media, police, governments — apparently any credible mainstream organization with influence — to confirm his belief that someone or some force is mutilating his farm animals with lasers. He would scarcely start off with a hello when I fielded his calls and visits before he launched into his theories and tales of conspiratorial stonewalling by officialdom.

In person, he always had “evidence” at the ready: grisly photos of dead cattle and of cattle parts. He would take pains to show me how these photos proved his animals had been mutilated. Somewhere in the tickle trunk of my for-the-memoirs “keeper items” I have a page or two of these grainy, gruesome shots. I’m no farmer, veterinarian, laser expert or scientist. The photos don’t show me what Bock insisted they do.

The local police and federal and provincial environment officials would have nothing to do with him back then — though all had seemed to have explored his assertions to some degree. Journalistic queries to these players offered no suggestions that Bock’s notions were matters of public interest or that Bock was credible.

Bock appealed to more media outlets than just mine in my New Brunswick period. I spoke with the assignment editor of another paper in the province, one located much closer to Bock and he well knew of him — but didn’t think well of him or his hypotheses.

I also recall listening to a CBC Radio call-in show while I lived in the province and chuckled as I heard Bock come on the line. He opened — briefly — with a comment related to whatever was the subject under discussion and then launched into his latest cattle-and-lasers claim.

Since then, he’s told his story online in various forms. I noted, however, that YouTube seems to have deemed some of his video inappropriate for public screening. I suspect that will see YouTube added to Bock’s list of denier agencies.

When I used to encounter him, Bock came off like a wild kook and was widely regarded as such by my peers.

But still, I wondered about Bock and his claims. I still do.

In the New Brunswick newsroom I used to work in, there were people who recalled the seeming crazies who once told of things such as the use of Agent Orange around CFB Gagetown in the province, or of child sex abuse surrounding a Fredericton-area reformatory. Those wild allegations turned out to be true. They were terrible stories and cover-ups. No wonder some of the individuals who emerged to speak of them seemed so unstable and fearful.

This media market has problematic would-be tipsters too. All do. Some here have provided the basis for significant recent stories. Some we have eventually dismissed — at least for now. We have greatly angered and saddened a couple of them in doing so.

A few remain like Bock — still desperately seeking to have their stories confirmed. They will not, can not, let go of them. To some degree, neither can I.

Phil Andrews is managing editor of the Guelph Mercury. His column appear Saturdays. He can be reached at 519-823-6050 or pandrews@guelphmercury.com